Bob Uecker cast the widest net any baseball announcer ever could
Bob Uecker did not get to see his Milwaukee Brewers win a World Series. He merely got to do everything else instead.
Uecker passed away at age 90, the Brewers reported Thursday. It was only months after he’d joined the team in the locker room after they’d clinched their latest NL Central title, joking he’d peed his pants after getting doused in champagne. He was 90 years old at the time, but still somehow the exact same man he’d been decades earlier — hilarious, hammy, self deprecating and exuding joy.
We know this because Uecker crammed more life into his 90 years than any other .200-hitting catcher. 53 years in the broadcast booth in a relatively small midwestern club should have left him as a local icon. Instead, he passed as a national celebrity.
Uecker was everywhere. There was no job too small for him. No joke he wasn’t willing to make at his own expense. He showed up at Wrestlemania and let Andre the Giant manhandle him.
He played a head in a jar on Futurama, telling the world he “hadn’t seen play this bad since the days of Bob Uecker.”
He was the father figure across 118 episodes of Mr. Belvedere. He was a barely fictionalized version of himself creating the most memorable quotes from Major League. He cracked Norm Macdonald up. He, along with John Madden and other sports figures, made light beer an industry unto itself.
His legacy will live on in Milwaukee because it was always going to live on there. The former Miller Park has multiple references to its longest tenured employee, from the Uecker seats at the top of the bleachers to the “get up, get up, get out of here!” signs that light up whenever any Brewer crushes a home run.
Even when he was cheering on a player 70 years younger than him, he remained electric.
But Uecker will be mourned beyond Wisconsin and beyond baseball. He was a sigil, a hero, a model of what hard work and a sense of humor could get you.
He was a journeyman with 146 career hits who still made it to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. He’s the voice my father imitates whenever he sees a wild pitch at any level of baseball (“juuuust a bit outside”) and the one my daughter knows as the ideal announcer because he showed up on episodes of everything from Puppy Dog Pals to Teen Titans Go!.
Bob Uecker wasn’t an announcer. He was an aspiration, proof you could thrive in an industry even if you fail at first. He was a bull rider, tilting and shifting as his dream bucked underneath him, showcasing strength and balance and the versatility to adjust however he needed to keep riding no matter what.
Uecker crammed an enormous amount into 90 years. His final season in the booth ended in a champagne shower. Now we get to raise a Miller Lite in his honor, ideally while watching live sports from 400 feet away, and toast the man whose head looked like a softball in Andre the Giant’s hands and who, in his own words, had “seen Mr. Belvedere naked.”
Don’t feel bad about cracking jokes about Uecker in death. He’d be right alongside you cracking them in life.